Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Traherne (English Poet)

Thomas Traherne (c.1636–74) was an Anglican clergyman and Metaphysical poet. His main works remained unpublished until the early 20th century, when Poems and Centuries of Meditation were finally brought to light.

Born in Hereford, Traherne studied at Brasenose College-Oxford. He became rector of Credenhill in 1657 and chaplain to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, in 1667. Among his notable writings are the anti-Catholic Roman Forgeries (1673) and Christian Ethicks (1675.)

In his works, Traherne emphasized trusting the divine intuitions of childhood and expressed a profound sense of mystical connection. His major prose work Centuries of Meditation and many of his poems were discovered in a notebook on a London bookstall in 1896. Centuries of Meditation was first published in 1908, while his poetry appeared as Poetical Works in 1903. Another collection, Poems of Felicity, followed in 1910.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Traherne

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Happiness

More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.
—Thomas Traherne

To love one person with a private love is poor and miserable: to love all is glorious.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Love

I will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings advance you to glory: but by the gentle ways of peace and love.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Glory

Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our love to others, and others love to us.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Gratitude

A little grit in the eye destroyeth the sight of the very heavens, and a little malice or envy a world of joys. One wry principle in the mind is of infinite consequence.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Perspective

An empty book is like an infant’s soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Reading, Books

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Innocence

The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Action

This moment exhibits infinite space, but there is a space also wherein all moments are infinitely exhibited, and the everlasting duration of infinite space is another region and room of joys.
—Thomas Traherne

You never know yourself till you know more than your body.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Identity, Self-Knowledge

Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Pleasure, Enjoyment

Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Childhood, Youth

Had we not loved ourselves at all, we could never have been obliged to love anything. So that self-love is the basis of all love.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Vanity, Conceit

Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Happiness

To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to happiness.
—Thomas Traherne
Topics: Madness

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